|
Is it racism, or is it something more? By Michael C. Guilmette Jr. Originally published on Jan. 14, 2010, in the Connersville News-Examiner. If history were a guide, Harry Reid, the Democrat Senate majority leader from Nevada, would be packing his bags.
This past weekend, Reid was exposed having described then-candidate Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign as a light-skinned African-American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” as reported by Time magazine’s Mark Halperin and New York magazine’s John Heilemann in their new book, “Game Change.” Reid’s remarks have set off a political fire storm and have fanned the flames of racial debate across the nation. Despite Reid’s quick apology and now-President Obama’s quick acceptance, Republicans are crying foul. “There is this standard where the Democrats feel that they can say these things and they can apologize when it comes from the mouths of their own. But if it comes from anyone else, it’s racism,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele on Sunday. “It’s either racist or it’s not. And it’s inappropriate, absolutely.” Joining the chorus are Congressional Republicans and conservative pundits who say this incident demonstrates a clear double standard that exists in the way race issues are treated between the two political parties. They have a point, when we consider how former Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott was treated back in 2002 when he used a flippant remark to bring a smile to the face of Democrat turncoat Strom Thurmond at the former segregationist’s 100th birthday party. Lott jokingly said the nation would be better off had Thurmond prevailed in his 1948 bid for the presidency on the Dixiecrat ticket. Within a matter of days and despite apologies, Lott stepped down from his leadership role in the Senate. Reid, like Lott, is facing calls to step down from his own leadership role. Unlike Lott, Reid isn’t heeding the call. “It’s difficult to see this situation as anything other than a clear double standard on the part of Senate Democrats and others,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement on Sunday. With the media and pundits doing backflips to sweep his comments under the rug, Reid is likely not feeling much pressure to step aside, especially since Obama needs him to pass his unpopular and onerous health care reform bill. So, one can imagine the president’s political agenda is outweighing Reid’s racial insensitivity, allowing Obama and his Democrat allies to look past the controversy. But what if Reid’s attitude was not racist? What if it is something more? It is true Democrats have a long history of questionable racial attitudes — questionable being somewhat of an understatement. In the 19th century, Democrats ardently defended slavery and then invented segregation when they failed to block the Republican-backed 13th Amendment that finally outlawed the repugnant practice of human bondage. Many Democrats in the 20th century had to be dragged kicking and screaming to accept the concept of equality and civil rights. National Guard troops were needed to prevent Democrat governors from blocking school desegregation. It was Thurmond himself who filibustered in the Senate for more than 24 hours in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat civil rights legislation. Democrats now hold high the image they are the champions of racial equality, but their views are not all that equal. Underneath the blatantly racial component of Reid’s remarks may lie something far more sinister — an arrogant elitism that holds all below the political class in contempt and a strategy aimed at keeping groups of Americans at each other’s throats. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama disparaged “bitter clingers” in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, saying they were clinging to their guns and Bibles while remaining fearful of immigrants. He also trashed his own grandmother, calling her a “typical white woman.” The media isn’t much better. We are constantly deluged with accounts highlighting the supposed differences between arbitrarily defined groups of Americans, presented with a feigned tone of disapproval. While race is still the hot button topic that usually creates an uproar with every real or perceived slight, it is masking the reality of the situation — in the eyes of the political class, we are all equally worthless. Even with a majority of Americans opposing health care reform, Democrats and Obama are pushing ahead with it, as they are with “cap and trade” legislation even though man-made climate change has been exposed as a hoax. They think we do not know what is good for us, and they’re going to tell us what is whether we like it or not. Former Oklahoma Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards told a seminar at George Washington University on Jan. 6 that his constituents “didn’t have all the information that was available to me or to other members of Congress or to the president. “You have to, on important matters, sometimes you have to say, ‘I listened to my constituents. I took them seriously. They’re just wrong,’” Edwards said. We’re just wrong, regardless of how we look. We’re unsophisticated boobs who develop our ignorant opinions from the radio, television and the Internet while swilling beer, eating salt and driving our economy vehicles. Maybe it’s time to start looking down at them — from the ballot box. • Guilmette is managing editor of the News-Examiner. He may be contacted at mguilmette@newsexaminer.com. |
|||
|
|||
|
Copyright © 2010, Michael C. Guilmette Jr. |
He’ll likely be packing his bags soon enough as the Nevada voters will likely decide he’s been in the Senate long enough and cast a vote of no confidence against the four-term senator and allow him to return to his land deals. But if Reid were to be treated like any of his Republican counterparts, he would be on a train back to Las Vegas as we speak.
